The same face shows youth and old age.

"When I was alive, I believed--as you do--that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls."

The Last Unicorn
by Peter S. Beagle

Consciousness is the ability to see the whole of our lives in each moment.

Precede each significant choice of the day, my dears, with the words, what is my purpose here?

Happy New Year!

"Barely four months total I had known Astrid and I felt like I had crossed over. Sometimes when I opened my mouth I felt like I could breathe fire.

Now I knew you could be in control like that. Anything could be yours, you could take it and all you had to do was ask. At the Coffee Trader, Metro, wherever. One minute you're stirring sugar into your coffee, the next you're flying through the night beside some hot guy with a pierced lip who whistles through his teeth and calls you darlin', just a little bit shy.

'Isn't it wild?' Astrid said after we'd picked up a cuple of punk rockers on Downer, all of us crammed into Juli's car, sitting on laps and laughing, heading for a garage party on the Southside.

'Wish I'd met you sooner,' I told her.

'Don't wish.' Astrid grinned. 'Just enjoy it.'

So we drove on, the three of us, young and glorious, fierce eyed and smoking, blazing though the night."

Whores on the Hill
by Colleen Curran